I want to thank the Moore and Freeman families for your examples of love, compassion, leadership, and integrity. I am grateful, especially, to Gus and Mam Moore who continue to amaze me with their love for each other and for their children. Special thank you to my husband, Eric. Thank you to Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna for being an invaluable resource, and to the University of Liberia. To the former child combatants who entrusted me with your stories—thank you for your lesson in forgiveness. Huge thank you to the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, to Graywolf Press, and to my agent, Susan Golomb. Thank you for Zoe Zolbrod and Martha Bayne for selecting “love/woman/thirty” for publication in the Sunday Rumpus. I am grateful to Wiande Everett and Kula Moore-Junge, Susan Henderson, Mary Drummond, Sharon Kim, Eda Henries, and Prentice Onayemi for reading various versions of this book and providing feedback. Thank you to that table of angel girls in the sixth grade who became my sisters and teachers—your magic stays. To the Liberians who read this story as their own: I feel you pushing me along. I thank you. And finally, to Satta. Wherever you are in time—wandering our vast world, in paradise or interstellar—thank you.